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Russia's rotten downfall is impressive to watch. I'm Ukrainian/Armenian who grew up in Russia in the 80s, I had always assumed that the military would at least

• ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >You have to be one special piece of shit to destroy such legacy This isn't the cause by the actions of a single piece of shit (Putin) but the consequences of unchecked sistemic corruption that spans for decades across the entire government apparatus. I laughed out loud when I saw pictures of the ERA plates on Russian tanks were actually filled with cardboard because what should have been the Russian army modernization, is now parked in the biggest most luxurious yachts in the world and in the most desirable real estate in Europe and North America. So, as a European who's country had been under forced Russian occupation, and the puppet communist regime there caused scars that will still last for decades, I'm chuck full of joy to see Russia's army being crippled from inside by it's own corrupt system and the greed of it's own leaders. 10/10 I already have my apartment at 20C and can probably tolerate a bit lower if it means starving the Russian army and saving Ukrainian lives. Still, I expected the Russian government propaganda to spin this news into something like "Heroic Moskva cruiser managed to successfully destroy two enemy Neptune missiles with its hull, causing it to be promoted to the rank of submarine ".
  • topspin 5y ago
    > unchecked sistemic[sic] corruption that spans for decades across the entire government apparatus Centuries, really. The inveterate kleptocracy that is Russia goes back further than the Soviets. The only real crime that exists for the Russian elite is stealing more than allowed. That was true for the Boyars, the Nomenklatura and it remains true for the oligarchy.
    • throw_5202 5y ago
      There was some corruption in Soviet Union (like in most countries around the world with the exception of economically developed or/and democratic countries) but it was not fatal. Corruption in modern Russia is unique to Putin's regime - he used it (and still uses) as a tool to concentrate power - he puts in position of power only corrupt officials as a mean to get full loyalty - officials not loyal enough can be easily blackmailed, secret services have enough "kompromat" to put any government official into jail but are waiting for a signal from above. Corruption is the foundation for what in Russia called the "vertical of power", which essentially means that a person in a power structure have almost unlimited (limited only by Putin, but not by the law) power over people below. Looks like this tool has spun out of control.
      • topspin 5y ago
        > There was some corruption in Soviet Union ... but if[sic] was not fatal It was actually fatal. I've studied the corruption that emerged under the Soviets; it was systemic and, in fact, necessary to mitigate the crippling adversities created by Soviet ideology. It is the primary reason the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago.
        • throw_5202 5y ago
          I was born in the Soviet Union, read book about Soviet economy and political system (albeit not scientific ones) and have a different take. Corruption is a broad term and one can probably say it was a contribution factor, but may take is that inefficiency of economy and misguided foreign policy (including Afghanistan invasion) were the fatal flaws. When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job. In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal. As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia. Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English. I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura
  • rlt 5y ago
    I would also take glee in this, were it not for the substantial (presumably at least partially functional) nuclear arsenal held by this dog being backed into a corner…
    • andrewflnr 5y ago
      I do entertain a faint hope that the rot has also infected Russia's nuclear arsenal, rendering some noticeable fraction of it inoperable or otherwise inert, but not enough to act on it.
      • CamperBob2 5y ago
        From the perspective of a Strategic Rocket Forces commander, what's the upside to actually using the maintenance budget for maintenance? None. It's free money for the taking. If the US starts WWIII, nobody will be left alive in Russia to care. If Russia starts WWIII, likewise, and it's better if the warheads don't work anyway. Meanwhile, that dacha on the Black Sea coast isn't going to pay for itself, nor is the boat that comes with it.
        • andrewflnr 5y ago
          Yeah, but even if 10% of the warheads go off vaguely on target, it's still really bad.
  • winrid 5y ago
    20C is what most Americans set their heaters to AFAIK (68F). Glad to know we're sticking it to the Russians... :)
    • mechanical_bear 5y ago
      Mine is set to 67f. Put on a sweater, it’s fine.
      • aww_dang 5y ago
        "Go outside and split some wood, you'll feel warm when you come back in"
        • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
          I've seen this in the military during the winter where a conscript complained he was cold so the drill instructor had him strip to his bare ass and stay like that for 2 minutes then asked: "Are you cold now?" "Yes sir!" "Now get dressed!", "Are you still cold?" "No sir!"
      • kwhitefoot 5y ago
        I don't even have central heating in my house (in Norway), it is almost never as warm as 20°C in the winter and I manage fine.
    • Symbiote 5y ago
      A lot of British people set theirs to around 18°C. It took me years to get used to the heat indoors when I moved to Scandinavia.
  • bmitc 5y ago
    > because what should have been the Russian army modernization, is now parked in the biggest most luxurious yachts in the world and in the most desirable real estate in Europe and North America. What worries me is that this is happening in the U.S. as well.
    • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      In what way? Is the US brass stealing money from the military?
      • throw_5202 5y ago
        Not stealing directly but US military industrial complex is a huge money sink which delivers much much less than civilian counterparts for the same money. F-35 story is a shame IMHO.
        • nradov 5y ago
          The problems on the Joint Strike Fighter program were caused more by flawed analysis of costs and military requirements than by outright corruption. Very little funding was stolen, and not many individuals have gotten personally wealthy from the program. Lockheed-Martin is now delivering an F-35 Block 4 product that, despite a few remaining minor flaws, substantially meets the customers' requirements. It's just that what the customers thought they wanted back in 1996 no longer aligns with what they actually need today.
        • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
          Corruption is a big issues in the west but compared to what's happening in Russia and ex-USSR countries, it's not even in the same ballpark, hell, it's not even in the same planet. In the west we have free press looking into it and exposing the theft, plus, the theft in the west has very complex schemes to make it look legit on the surface and to make sure nothing sticks to our Teflon politicians, but in Russia they don't need to worry about any red tape BS, they can just shove their hands in the public purse and take as much as they want and go directly to the Lamborghini dealership or the casino without any accountability, and if any reporter looks too deeply into their theft, they get death threats or even death through very suspicious circumstances. It's orders if magnitude worse.
  • 243423443 5y ago
    Do you have a source for the cardboard ERA plates? I only found the following, but apparently there is supposed to be cardboard in between the layers: https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/t73p1e/what_found_inside_the_era_on_russian_tanks_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/t73p1e/what_found...
    • dralley 5y ago
      You can clearly see in the pictures though that there are no plates on the outside.
    • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      I don't, but if the link you posted is the truth then I could have been mistaken.
  • henrikschroder 5y ago
    It's become clear to me that a lot of us who grew up during the cold war, kept thinking that Russia was still as much of a threat as the Soviet Union was, which is why so many of us are surprised at this turn of events. But the Soviet Union fell thirty years ago, an entire generation ago. The Soviet Union had 280 million people, more than the US had at the time. Big. Scary. But Russia today has only 140 million people. Over half the population just up and left when given the chance. They said "thanks, but no thanks" to Moscow. Sure, Russia still has a big military budget, but their GDP isn't that great. Their GDP is much smaller than Italy's, alone. Smaller than France's, alone. Smaller than Germany's, alone. Hell, even the five Nordic countries have a higher combined GDP than Russia has. Growing up in the Nordics during the cold war meant having to think about Russia as an enormous big bad who could crush us completely if they wanted to. But now, our combined economies are larger. Russia is corrupt, and has been corrupt for an entire generation. And it's been corrupt on a scale that is unprecedented compared to itself in the past, and compared to the rest of Europe. We complain about the military-industrial complex and how much waste there is, but military contractors in the west actually deliver stuff, whereas all the corrupted half-assery of the Russian military is being exposed now. The combined defence budget of the EU is about 4 times larger than Russia's. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has been prosperous, peaceful, and happy. We've invested in our defence and grown stronger over the last thirty years, while Russia has declined. We in the EU have over three times the population, over four times the military budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. We have nukes and tanks and aircraft carriers and submarines and stealth fighters of our own. And yet so many still view Russia as a threat, as a bigger and stronger foe. This debacle sure has been eye-opening to me, and I hope it's been that way for everyone else stuck in the cold-war mentality.
    • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >The combined defence budget of the EU is about 4 times larger than Russia's. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has been prosperous, peaceful, and happy. We've invested in our defence and grown stronger over the last thirty years, while Russia has declined. Simple. The EU is not military united but it's pretty much a "every man for himself" kind of thing outside of NATO or a direct attack, but the EU or NATO is currently not under attack so some people see Ukraine as "more of you problem than a me problem"… so other than sending some aid to Ukraine most people don't want to go to war with Russia or suffer crippling energy shortages for Ukraine. EU leaders are also not immune from kleptocratic greed and external and internal corruption. Austria is more than happy to keep pumping money into Russia in exchange for cheap gas, as that gas runs 80% of their industry, and several elite Austrian politicians were given top jobs on boards of Russian oil and gas companies to lobby for them and against nuclear or other alternatives, or have straight up offered their support to Russian oligarchs in under-the-table business deals ( the infamous "Ibiza scandal"). Good luck replacing that gas on a whim after several decades of Russian lobbying that lead to the current status quo.
• shmerl 5y ago
  When thieves run the country, why do you think the army won't be rotten all way through and steal all they could as well filling their own pockets instead of maintaining quality? Putin caught his own tail in this.
  • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Because Putin probably received assurance from his yes-men that the army is in tip top condition and they were so disconnected from reality, they probably didn't expect those down the food chain to be as thieving as they were at the top. I assume Putin has already gulaged some scapegoats that his cronies found responsible for this current mess.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • shmerl 5y ago
      He clearly will, since he can't show any success in the war. So he has to show success in finding who is guilty in the failure (to make it not him), uncovering some "conspiracy" and such.
      • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised to hear that those being thrown under the bus have mysteriously "committed suicide" by shooting themselves in the back five times before jumping off a bridge or driving head on into a tree with no brakes, so they wouldn't talk.
    • fsiefken 5y ago
      yes, for example a high ranking FSB official https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fsbs-beseda-in-prison-after-ukraine-intel-failings-soldatov-2022-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fsbs-beseda-in-prison...
      • HigherPlain 5y ago
• throwaway4good 5y ago
  I understand and have sympathy with the cheering; but something rings false in my ears. If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO? I fear that the Russians will be pushed into a more "traditional" warfare with heavy air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
  • mission_failed 5y ago
    Most countries would prefer to prevent the Russians ever entering their country and committing war crimes.
  • thawaya3113 5y ago
    1) No one expected them to be so weak and miserable. Note that every western analyst gave it at most 3 days (some might have said 7, but no one said more) before Kyiv would fall. Note also that even over a month into the invasion, and it making no progress, the narrative in western circles was that it was a result of a temporary logistics problem and/or using conscripts as cannon fodder. The professionals would come anytime soon and then Kyiv would be taken. 2) Nukes. 3) Even though the Russian military appears increasingly incompetent, they are still capable of creating immense damage and destruction.
    • drran 5y ago
      This prediction is correct for pre-war Ukraine. We lost Crimea without a fight. Now we have 8 years of experience and will to fight, because everyone lost somebody they know. However, Ukrainian army is poorly equipped. 200 thousand reservists cannot join Ukrainian army because of lack of equipment. We are trying to squeeze the last few drops from our reserves. We badly need new trucks. I have a driver (I'm lieutenant), but have no truck, because my truck was used in Chornobyl, so it's not operable now because of 30 years of out of service at conservation. If I have a truck, I can swap my cabin from Chornobyl truck to new truck and create a working communication station, but I cannot find a cheap truck to buy. If you have a barely working truck, please, sent it to Ukraine, Rivne, Ukrainian Army, 55 OPZ, 1 battalion.
• mushbino 5y ago
  Ukraine doesn't have a navy or air force anymore and a large portion of their mechanized force has been taken out. You wouldn't know it by listening to western media though. European/NATO countries are increasing their military spending for a reason. Russia has definitely been losing the propaganda war, that's for sure.
  • xenadu02 5y ago
    The conventional thinking was that the Russian Steamroller would flatten Ukraine within 3-5 days. Absolutely no one suspected the war would last this long. In that sense it is far from just a "propaganda war". I don't know why it should surprise anyone. People who make Putin unhappy end up with "accidental" polonium poisoning. Is there any reason to suspect the Russian military hasn't suffered some for that? Or that the Russian military-industrial complex hasn't suffered some due to looting, corruption, and incompetence? I'm not delusional. Russia has the resources (and human bodies) to waste on this for as long as it takes. If the leadership has the political will they will probably win eventually. It seems unlikely to be worth the cost but Russia would hardly be the first country to pay $100 for a penny in that regard.
  • blub 5y ago
    What media would you suggest? Surprisingly, I’ve found AlJazeera to be quite professional, if slightly biased for up-to-date news. Reports from rusi.org are interesting, but not free and some do have a whiff of opinion/cheering, which is rather suspect. Books by Mark Galeotti offer insight into the various Soviet and Russian conflicts and into their military forces.
    • klausjensen 5y ago
      If you want some more background rather than news, I recommed Gary Kasparov's book "Winter is coming". It is from 2015, but describes the process from the collapse of the Soviet Union and how Russia turned into effectively a fascist dictatorship. https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/garry-kasparov/winter-is-coming/9781610396219/ https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/garry-kasparov/win...
  • 5y ago
• grishka 5y ago
  It's kind of a self-sustaining problem. Russia has conscription for men. 99% of the guys I know (me included) hate this very idea and did their best to not serve (there's an entire underground industry dedicated to military service evasion). The remaining 1% did serve in the army, and consider it to be the worst year of their lives. So, as you imagine, most people that do end up in the army are generally the ones that aren't very smart and/or don't have the resources to evade it. Which you can pretty clearly see from their behavior in Kyiv oblast. It's kind of a negative selection that's been going on for quite some time. Conveniently, Maxim Katz's yesterday's video is about negative selection but higher up in the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kmwnZ4l_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kmwnZ4l_s
  • jansen555 5y ago
• dgudkov 5y ago
  Corruption in the army is one thing. Another one is over-relying on the nuclear weapons. They probably thought "Who cares if that tank's engine is stolen. After all, we have nukes!". Also, I would argue about legacy. The legacy, as with many things Russian, was mostly made up. The Soviet army did a lot of atrocities during, e.g. looting and rapings in WW2 in Germany (aka the "German spring"), the pointless Afghan war that killed 1mln civilians, the suppression of democracy in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, the Chechen wars, etc. It has never been as glorious as Soviet propaganda described it. It's always been ugly and brutal. PS. I highly recommend reading the long threads of Kamil Galeev [1] on Twitter. He did an excellent job explaining why Russia and its army are what they are. [1] https://twitter.com/kamilkazani https://twitter.com/kamilkazani
  • mcv 5y ago
    > "Who cares if that tank's engine is stolen. After all, we have nukes!" But what are the odds those nukes even work? From what I understand, they're complex devices that require expert maintenance. What are the odds they've been properly maintained over the disastrous past 3 decades? It's not something I'd ever want to bet on, because even if only 10% of their nukes work, that's still plenty to do tons of damage with, but considering the sorry state of their military, I'd be quite surprised if all of their nukes still worked perfectly.
    • dgudkov 5y ago
      That's a good question. It would be irresponsible to bet on the nukes not working. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if one day it becomes known that Russia's nukes are non-functional due to negligence and corruption.
      • hedora 5y ago
        Historically, Russian nukes tended to fail by disabling fail safes and self-arming. It took joint efforts with the US in the 90s to find(!) and disable the faulty ones. I'm surprised none have gone off, frankly.
    • 5y ago
• Animats 5y ago
  Historically, Russian units improve markedly after being banged around a bit. They don't go in for realistic training, don't have a good career NCO corps, and don't exercise their equipment much. Currently, Russian conscripts only serve one year, so they don't get enough training to know what they are doing. But after a few battles, the losers have been killed off and the units shake down into some level of competence. The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII. Their historical level of acceptable losses is high.
  • Fatnino 5y ago
    The russian population "growth" rate is in no condition to sustain 20m losses again.
  • rasz 5y ago
    Official WW2 USSR "losses" include people _they_ killed, like Polish officers in Katyn.
  • globalise83 5y ago
    Problem for them in this war is that the survivors don't learn much, they just didn't get hit by the Javelin this time.
  • dreamsbythelake 5y ago
    Did you serve to discuss the "history"? :-) "improve markedly after being banged around a bit." ... such a sweet child.
    • Animats 5y ago
      It's a quote from a US general. (Unfortunately, Google is no longer very good at finding historical items like that.)
• rich_sasha 5y ago
  I wonder if the current situation looks very different to what the German attack looked like in 1941. AFAIK Russians were then too terribly underequiped, undertrained and taking heavy losses in a rapid retreat. Except then they were being attacked, had the Russian winter on their side, and had conscription and the heavy industry fully mobilised. Plus eventually lots of American-made kit (which wasn’t necessarily better weaponry but at least was made to plan, had spare parts etc). It took the Russians a while to transition to the great victory in the “great patriotic war”. Incidentally, this is why I don’t write them off yet, though I sincerely hope Ukraine clocks in a big win. Russians do have the resilience and stubbornness to push through. Whether that can overcome decades of corruption etc remains to be seen.
  • federoccco 5y ago
    But it wasn’t the Russians in WW2, there were everyone Soviet, from Ukrainians to Georgians, and Russians of course, but to give the Russians the mantle of only WW2 winners from Soviet side is wrong I think.
    • vasac 5y ago
      Yeah, Russians are responsible for bad things, real and invented. But if something good was done then it was done by Soviets.
      • federoccco 5y ago
        2 of my Ukrainian great-grandfathers died in WW2, many other relatives that I do not know about. Were they Russians? Soviets did plenty of bad things, I don't get that jab. Many Russians now in Russia hate the Soviet moniker and look at the October Revolution as a catastrophe. Only for Westerners Soviet == Russian, which puzzles me absolutely.
        • hedora 5y ago
          Westerners are usually referring to the Russian leadership. There's a straight line of corruption from the Soviets to Putin. Also, we're bad at geography, and "former soviet state" is easy / lazy. Finally, I know lots of Ukrainians that grew up in Russia and vice versa, and can't really keep all the permutations straight. (As I can't for my colleagues from any continent.)
• dreamsbythelake 5y ago
  Amen, brother. As someone who belonged, when you put on the chest your AKM, take that red folder and say "Торжественно клянусь" - you swear to protect those people no matter what. And when you turn you weapon on them ... I don't expect russian military men to read HN and understand English :-), but anyway - once you turn your weapon on civilians, you may take those epaulets, stick them up your ass and hope nobody can find you. But they will.
• TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Was the Russian military ever that good, actually? In WW2 Russia definitely played a strong role against Germany, but they took massive losses to do so, they desperately needed US equipment/supplies to even do that, and then when they pushed back across Europe they were war criming all over the place, including mass rape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Mass_rapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Mass_rapes Then when you look post WW2, they were mostly just used to brutally crush a few uprisings, never really had to fight a real war until the current one.
  • dsq 5y ago
    I wonder if mass rape in world war two could be verified by DNA analysis of the following generation to see how many newborn were the product of males from occupying forces as opposed to previous generations.
    • drran 5y ago
      You can start with DNA analysis of Vladimir Pukin and Angela Markel.
  • muchtest 5y ago
    Seeing more of this Revisionism of WW2 since the cooling of US-Russia relations (adding to the long time downplaying of Chinese suffering in WW2 vs European suffering) 1 - While Russia was the biggest component, it was the Soviet army - which included Ukraine (and led by a Georgian). So you're tarring both sides of the current war in your comment. 2 - It was a World War, tragic for all parties involved. You look at each side and they had moments of brilliance and absolute disasters. The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry because the Axis forces were literally on their front, not separated by an Atlantic Ocean. Would the SU have won without American supplies? We don't know, but to downplay the player who was involved in the biggest military operations of the war that made D Day look like a side battle (Stalingrad, Kursk, Seelow Heights, Leningrad, Operation Bagration, search any one of those) shows a lack of historical awareness. Edit - Adding to the above - more Civilians died in the Soviet Union than the total combined military deaths of the other Allied Powers. War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.